6.5

The Source

Movies Reviews
The Source

We are nation obsessed with pop culture. The Internet has become the great equalizer; there are websites, forums and groups devoted to every imaginable interest, philosophy and lifestyle. The term “counterculture” is charmingly obsolete. We are the assimilators and the assimilated. In America’s pre-connected recent history—the 1960s and 1970s—this was not the case. Young people by the tens of thousands took Timothy Leary’s admonition to heart: tune in, turn on, drop out. Hundreds of social experiments in communal living cropped up along the California coast. Some terrified us (think Manson Family), some mystified us (think Krishna Consciousness), and some exploited us (think People’s Temple.) There was one group in West Hollywood who embraced the concepts of communal living and spiritual enlightenment quite successfully. They worked hard, ran a successful business and tried their best to embrace a spiritual philosophy that promised enlightenment while dictating a less than comfortable lifestyle.

This group was known as the Source Family. Led by a fiftysomething, physically imposing, very handsome, decorated World War II veteran born Jim Baker, 140 attractive kids from all over the country attempted to establish their own utopia dedicated to enlightenment. Baker was known to his followers as Father Yod and Ya Ho Wha. Father Yod was a wealthy owner of three wildly successful health-food restaurants in California. The most famous of the three, The Source, was so well known that it was covered in the national press, spoofed in both a Saturday Night Live skit and in the Woody Allen classic, Annie Hall. Acknowledged as the first organic health food restaurant in the nation, The Source was a magnet for high-profile celebrities such as Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando and John Lennon. From 1970 until 1975, The Source was staffed by Family members and was the Family’s source of support.

The film The Source is based on the 2007 book, The Source, the Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wha 13 and the Source Family, edited by Jodi Wille. Wille saw potential for a documentary in the book, and teamed with commercial director Maria Demopoulos to write and direct it. Source Family member Isis the Aquarian (nee Charlene Peters), appointed by Father Yod as the Family’s official historian, once again opened the Family archives to Wille. Isis currently serves a loosely organized group of former family members as archivist, collecting and cataloging thousands of photographs, hundreds of hours of film footage, countless press clippings, and rooms full of other artifacts. Drawing on this vast collection, Wille and Demopoulos assembled The Source. The documentary tells the story of the Source Family, alternating photographs, clippings and footage with talking-head style commentary by former cult members. (Don’t be put off by the word “cult.” It’s what Father Yod himself called his group of spiritually hungry young followers.) The film centers on Jim Baker, chronicling his self-directed ascent from seeker to Father Yod, to Ya Ho Wha, to self-proclaimed God, while shouldering the responsibility for dozens of followers and their children. Along the way, he picked up a brand new Rolls-Royce sedan dubbed “The Chariot,” a fleet of Volkswagen vans, and 13 wives.

What makes the Source Family more intriguing than other communes in the late ’60s and early ’70s is their music. Father Yod incorporated psychedelic improvisational music into his spiritual mix of yoga, marijuana, tantric sex and meditation. The Family band, known as YaHoWha 13, released 10 albums, The records sold for $10 each at the little bookstore attached to The Source Restaurant. The albums were largely ignored when they were originally released, but over the ensuing 40 years, they have garnered more attention and are not recognized as great achievement in psychedelic rock. The 13-album boxed set, God and Hair, is available currently on Amazon.com, and several albums and singles are available singly, as well. The film uses this music exclusively as the soundtrack. It is remarkably good music, sometimes haunting and ethereal, sometimes driven by tribal drumbeats and primal wails. The songs are thoughtfully and effectively paired with the photographs and home movies that comprise most of the film.

Technically, The Source is a documentary, but it’s easier to define this film by what it is not. It isn’t not a history of the Source Family. Wille omits very important events in the Family’s chronology that shaped what it was and how it would evolve. For example, although Family members had sworn not to seek traditional medical attention for illness, one parent brought a child with a severe infection to a local hospital. This trip precipitated a call by health-care workers to California’s child protective services, which resulted in the decision to move the group from West Hollywood to Hawaii. This event is not mentioned in the film. Nor is The Source a study of the group’s belief system. Many of the core beliefs were, and remain, secret—available only to full-fledged Family members. The film also is not a biography of Jim Baker. The film briefly mentions that Baker killed two men with his bare hands. One former member mentions that Baker said he had also robbed several banks. The filmmakers don’t take this opportunity to delve deeper into Baker’s dark past. The film makes no mention of Baker’s first wife and two children, whom he abandoned in Ohio when he moved to California. There seem to be many missed opportunities for some excitement in a bland film.

What The Source becomes is a photographic tribute to Father Yod. By all accounts, he was an incredibly charismatic and compelling leader, and Wille and Demopoulos are quick to lend their voices to the cheering crowds. Yes, there are meticulous details about life within the Mother House walls and the obligatory “where are they now” concluding segment, but it is impossible for the viewer to meld all that minutiae into a meaningful, synergistic whole. The Source does give us an example of a relatively successful experiment in communal living and the search for enlightenment, but it stops short of transcendence.

Directors:
Writers: Jodi Wille, Maria Demopoulos
Release Date: May 1, 2013

Share Tweet Submit Pin